Hello X100T

As you may remember, my X100 was totalled when I was hit by a rogue wave at Point Peron a few months ago.

I had it checked out by an authorised camera repairer, but no surprises, it was properly dead.

But I’m insured, so thanks to RAC, it only took a short while before I had a cheque in my hands and I could look for a new camera (actually, the cheque came later than my clicking ‘buy now, but that spoils the narrative)

As luck would have it, Fujifilm have been beavering away with some updates to the X100S (which was the successor to the X100) – and the X100T was released.

I quickly snagged one of the first ones from DigitalRev in Hong Kong and it arrived in my grubby hands three days later. Trouble is, I’ve been busy and unable to take any shots and experiment Until today that is.

I played around with the film simulation settings – people have been raving about the new ‘Classic Chrome’ setting, so I thought I’d compare it to the regular and Velvia settings.

First – Regular

This is how the Classic Chrome looks. Just like your film shots would have done in the 60’s. I’m not over sold on this. Maybe it would look good as part of a retro project or something, but for regular photos, I think the standard look is just right.

This was Velvia – I love the saturation of the colours – and the slight magenta tint to the blues is about right, but the sky looks a little purple for my tastes. I’ll have to stick some Velvia film in the Hasselblad for comparison.

Macro is good – easy, fast to focus and has a reasonable out of focus ‘bokeh’ too. Similar to the X100, limited by the focal length of the lens and sensor size.

Another Classic Chrome shot.

Velvia

Classic Chrome

So – whats improved over the X100?

Focus speed is much better

Rear LCD quality and information display much improved

Electronic viewfinder is actually usable and in some lighting, preferable to the optical viewfinder

Overall camera performance is about 10x faster

Controls make more sense – thetre’s been a great deal of thought put into how usable it is

Theres a tiny pop in LCD screen in the viewfinder what helps show the focus point in in optical viewfinder mode – it’s very small and I don’t think it’s relevant for my use.

I wish the X100 was still working so I could actually do some comparisons for speed and image quality. It’s a different sensor (x-trans vs Beyer in the X100) – so there are some differences in the image – they just look a little different, but at this point, I don’t have a feel for what the differences are.

So going forward I have this little beauty as my primary camera – I’ll need a little time to get used to the differences, but I already love it.